Comments on Tiger Tales: A Detroit Tigers Blog: Tigers team statistical summary for 2008

Interesting.In other words the Tigers could have w...

2008-10-09T14:41:00.000-04:00

Interesting.

In other words the Tigers could have won the division if they had fielded and hit as well as last year despite AWFUL PITCHING!

That is not how I perceived the season and strangely it gives me optimism about next year because there are lots of ways to fix the team.

This is a great question and you were on the right...

2008-10-09T12:37:00.000-04:00

This is a great question and you were on the right track. A play made is considered to be .8 runs saved. The simplest explanation I could find is by Tom Tango:

http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/article/why_saving_a_play_is_worth_08_runs/

Last year, the Tigers were at +45 so their defense saved 36 runs more than the average team. This year they were -54 so that's 43

I probably should have done this before my first p...

2008-10-09T12:11:00.000-04:00

I probably should have done this before my first post to avoid too many comments, but the naive approach at least appears feasible.

Using the simplest form of Pythagoread wins the Tigers lost 6 wins because they scored fewer runs this year. If you call the difference between the Pythagorean wins and actual wins luck then the Tigers lost 2 wins because they were more unlucky this year

Thanks for the link to THT. Those guys have a kna...

2008-10-09T11:44:00.000-04:00

Thanks for the link to THT. Those guys have a knack for making stats explainable.

Now I know going through multiple estimations we might lose some correlation, but has anyone taken the difference in +/- and tried to correlate it with runs?

Naively I suppose you might assume all unfielded balls were all singles and see how that might alter OBP and SLG against your pitchers and